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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29760138">building a grave this whole time</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathdreamt/pseuds/deathdreamt'>deathdreamt</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Codependency, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Sam Winchester, Post-Episode: s02e22 All Hell Breaks Loose, Pre-Stanford Era (Supernatural), Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Unhealthy Relationships, i havent tagged for spn fic for a long time forgive the mess, they're fucked up your honour</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:47:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,115</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29760138</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathdreamt/pseuds/deathdreamt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam wants to take Dean’s face in his hands, reverent. He wants to hold him steady and say here, here are the ways we’re the same; do you get it yet?</p><p>(Sam is thirteen, twenty-two, twenty-four, and coming apart at the seams.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>49</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>building a grave this whole time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A hunt in the backwoods of North Carolina when Sam is thirteen – should’ve been a run of the mill haunting but turns into Dean bleeding sluggishly on the backseat, half propped across Sam’s lap. His right side is torn open, a jagged line beneath his ribs. John’s driving like a machine, eyes flicking to the rearview and back to the road too fast. Won’t say he’s panicking but Sam knows.</p><p>Sam’s hands don’t feel like his own when he lifts them shining from his brother’s torso in the dark of the car. There’s too much blood. Dean’s gritting his teeth so hard Sam can feel it, the press of his cheek against denim.</p><p>“Dad I think,” Sam hates that his voice wavers, “I think you need to stop and fix him. I just. Please, I think you need to.”</p><p>“You keeping pressure?” John yanks round over the seat, the car swerving. “Keep pressure on that.”</p><p>“He needs a hospital, dad,” Sam says, even though he knows John won’t do it. They’ll get back to the motel and dad’ll dose Dean up on stolen meds and stitch him back together in the bathroom where everything is wipe clean.</p><p>Sam had shrugged his hoodie off when John had first shovelled Dean into the car and barked at Sam to hold him steady and he uses both hands now to press it down against the wound. Dean hisses sharp through his teeth. In the flashes of moonlight Sam sees his eyes scrunched tight and he’s glad, stupidly, so Dean doesn’t see that he’s crying.</p><p>He’s not even the one bleeding and he’s crying. He whispers <em>sorry I’m sorry Dean</em>, pushes harder. “How long til the motel?”</p><p>“Sammy—”</p><p>“How long til the fucking motel, dad!” Sam doesn’t curse around John, not at him, not ever. His voice cracks, not yet grown enough to make the anger cover the fear. And he feels both like a current: if dad doesn’t put his fucking foot down Sam’s going to kill him, if Dean bleeds out right here Sam’s going to scream and not stop. It’s dad’s fault, all of it – he took too long digging up old bones, left Dean open and out of bullets, left Sam in the car because it wasn’t going to be a late night.</p><p>In his lap Dean coughs, brittle sounding. His hands grip Sam’s where they’re pushing down and knots their fingers together, slick against his knuckles.</p><p>John looks over his shoulder once, mouth a bitten line, and says nothing. </p><p> </p><p>Later dad fills Dean with enough codeine to render him near catatonic and props him in the shower tray to lace his side back up. Sam watches from one of the twin beds and bites his thumbnail down until it stings. Dean’s blood in the creases of his palms, dried black into his jeans.</p><p>“Get cleaned up, Sam,” dad says, voice careful, eyes still fixed on the needle. He wipes his hands down on the remains of Dean’s shirt and a motel towel so wrecked they’re going to have to bury it in the trunk. “He’ll be okay, I promise.”</p><p>Sam doesn’t say anything about that, because John has promised a lot of things over the years and delivered on precious few of them. He shirks his blood-stained clothes and shoves them into their dirty washing bag, keeps his eyes on Dean. Pulls on an old Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt several sizes too big, keeps his eyes on Dean.</p><p>They’ve been sharing one of the beds and he’s suddenly terrified that dad might put his foot down – Dean’s too cut up, too liable to bleed, too much in need of a sickbed. John’s been reluctant to let them share lately but more reluctant to shell out for two rooms, and Sam has been secretly glad of it. He washes his hands in the kitchenette and watches the water run pink.</p><p>Dad hoists Dean from the floor and helps him over to the bed, pulls his boots and jeans off and then folds the sheets up around him. He pauses in the half dark, Sam hovering in his periphery.</p><p>“You’re bunking in with me, Sammy. Let him get his rest.”</p><p>“I don’t want to,” Sam says, even though dad’s tone means it’s not up for debate.</p><p>“Let him be,” John says. Sam doesn’t look at him. “Just for tonight.”</p><p> </p><p>By the time the sun splinters in through the motel curtains and wakes him dad has already slipped out for coffee. Sam can see Dean’s frowning in his sleep. He pads across the room and crawls under the covers, a heat-seeking missile, skinny arms reaching across the mattress until they latch onto Dean’s shoulder, and his heart settles for the first time since last night.</p><p>“Hey kiddo,” Dean mumbles, voice buried beneath sleep and codeine. Sam has never been so glad to hear him say anything.</p><p>“Hey,” he says. He tucks himself under Dean’s arm, fits against him like he used to when they were both smaller. When Dean realises he’s crying, face pressed damp against his chest, he squeezes him tight as he can manage.</p><p>“Sammy baby, hey. I’m good,” he says, so quiet Sam wouldn’t hear it if his head wasn’t tucked under Dean’s chin. It’s a nickname usually reserved for when Sam’s sick and not even dad uses it much now. With his other hand Dean takes Sam’s and moves it clumsily across to the square of gauze covering most of his right side. “See? Dad did a good job.”</p><p>“Dad’s fault in the first place.” Sam keeps his palm steady. Remembers the blood.</p><p>Dean tips his face against the top of Sam’s head, and doesn’t say a thing.</p><p> </p><p>Sam is fifteen when he starts praying about whatever it is that crouches behind his heart. Secretive and ashamed, eyes screwed shut while he brushes his teeth and thinks <em>please god how can I fix this I need to fix this. </em>Lingers outside churches and considers begging. They’re in rural Louisiana in a heatwave, dad papering the motel walls with Rougarou lore and police reports, and Sam watches Dean sleeping an arm-span away and wants to touch the line of his jaw.</p><p>He’s angry at how nobody seems to see it. How John watches them move in sync, clocks how they can speak with looks and tilts of the head, calls it a job well done. How he can watch them stitch each other up so often it comes as easy as darning socks and not feel sick at what he’s forged here. Sometimes Sam imagines confronting him – do you know Dean knows when I wake up from a nightmare before I even open my eyes, do you know I can’t sleep if he isn’t here, do you know I feel like I’d die if he died. Hey Dad, is that a job well done? Is this the tight-knit unit you imagined?</p><p>Sam knows he shouldn’t feel like vomiting when he catches Dean making out with some girl in the car, a sharp twist of something possessive flaring in his gut. He’s not stupid.</p><p>The problem with putting his life under a microscope is that the chance of finding red flags is stupid high and Sam doesn’t want to look too closely. Death of a parent, constant uprooting, hardline father with a whatever complex. The tangled-up mess inside his brother that make him want to have Sam in his pocket all the time. The fact of the matter is that if Dean is the problem it’s only because dad made him that way and if dad’s the problem it’s only because mom made him that way and maybe Sam shouldn’t dump it all on her but what’s she going to do, she’s dead.</p><p>The fact of the matter is that if Dean is the problem Sam doesn’t want it fixing.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>For the first few months at Stanford he doesn’t hear from Dean or dad and he doesn’t reach out to them either, and that’s just fine. So what if he sometimes dials Dean’s number when he’s slumped in someone’s dorm corridor, stinking of tequila – it doesn’t count.</p><p>It’s coming up on his birthday, the first time Dean calls him, and Sam almost doesn’t pick up. They talk about the poltergeist that broke dad’s wrist last week and the grades Sam got back after first semester and when Dean asks if he’s bedded any nerdy college chicks Sam rolls his eyes and lies.</p><p>They don’t talk about the knife Sam keeps in his boot or the way he catches himself scouring news sites for weird occurrences or the fact his roommate probably thinks he has a sodium deficiency. They don’t talk about how Sam sleeps in one of Dean’s Skynyrd shirts.</p><p>Dean calls on and off. Sometimes Sam calls him. Sometimes he texts him things like <em>hey did you see the new Star Wars </em>and thinks about texting him things like <em>next time you’re in cali swing by </em>just to see what Dean would say to him calling it Cali.</p><p>Dad never calls. That’s okay.</p><p>Jess helps, a little. She messes up his hair and calls him an asshole and brings him coffee at 4am when he’s knee-deep in essays. Three months into their relationship he comes down with a stomach flu and finds her standing outside his door, half a medicine cabinet in her bag.</p><p>There’s a scar that curves right across Sam’s shoulder blade, souvenir from a demon in Tennessee when he was fifteen, and the first time Jess sees it she presses her cheek to it, arms around his waist from behind, and doesn’t ask.</p><p>He loves her so much it almost crowds out the twenty-year-old ache in his bones. He thinks if he loves her enough it might crowd out the nightmares.</p><p> </p><p>She’s been dead two weeks when Sam finds himself sharing a bed with his brother like they're kids again.</p><p>They’re somewhere in Colorado, a day off the wendigo hunt that left Dean’s right side mottled purple, his wrists angry and raw. Dean had bitched while Sam poured the rubbing alcohol, holding Dean’s hands steady one at a time as he cleaned him up. Cursed through his teeth while Sam rolled his eyes.</p><p>Now in the half dark Sam has yelled himself awake, Jess’ name caught like his throat’s a trap. Sitting up with Dean’s palm hot on his chest, the other finding the space between his shoulder blades, rubbing circles like he used to when Sam was small. If he closes his eyes this could be any motel room from the last twenty-two years, his frantic heart held safe between Dean’s hands. He feels all of six years old.</p><p>And it’s fine, really, because Sam can barely breathe through the grief and if what it takes to keep him steady is Dean sleeping next to him then he’ll do it. Dean will do anything; sometimes Sam wonders how far he could push.</p><p>He wakes with the sleep-weight of an arm across his waist and Dean’s breath against the nape of his neck and Sam wants to either never move again or to die right there. He thinks about praying about it but doesn’t know which outcome he’d be hoping for.</p><p>He laces his fingers on top of Dean’s, pulls their hands up to sit against his clavicle. Brushes his thumb across grazed knuckles. He prays about it anyway.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>By January they’re in Ohio, smashed glass glittering everywhere, crunching underfoot.</p><p>There’s blood smeared across Sam’s cheekbones, a headache settling in as if the ghost had jammed her thumbs into his eye sockets and pushed. He’d expected that, the secret of his nightmares wrapped so tight behind his ribs it’d need professional excavation by this point, but he didn’t expect to blink the sting out of his eyes when it was finally over and see the bloody tears mirrored on Dean’s face. It’s an interesting development.</p><p>Dean’s cupping Sam’s jaw just firmly enough, thumb skating across his chin and up to the corner of his mouth where the tears are smudged a dark rust. Sam wants to turn his mouth into Dean’s palm, lick his own blood from his brother’s heartline.</p><p>“You got a little something,” he says instead, touching his fingertips to Dean’s cheekbone.</p><p>“Yeah, you and me both.” Dean scans his face, moves his hands down to his shoulders and his ribs, taking inventory. There’s a question in his eyes whenever they flick back to Sam’s, but he doesn’t ask it, not yet.</p><p>“I fucking hate Ohio,” Sam says.</p><p>“Amen to that.” Dean lifts his t-shirt and scrubs it over his face, stomach a flash of pale in the dark. Sam turns decisively to leave.</p><p>In the car he watches Dean driving, profile lit anaemic by the streetlights, and tries to imagine what he’s carrying that’s so bad. Sam’s head throbs, dull and constant. Dean still has dried blood on the back of his hand from where he’d swiped at his eyes, patches on his shirt gone black with it. Sam has a feeling they’re going to be picking mirror shards out of their hands for days.</p><p>They put Toledo in the rearview and Sam doesn’t dig up the prophetic nightmares partly because he wants one thing that’s still his, partly because he thinks Dean’ll blow the whole thing out of proportion, and partly because Dean isn’t forthcoming with his own deep dark secret, whatever the fuck that is. Sam asks, when they’re almost an hour out of town, but Dean huffs that sharp almost-laugh and turns the music up, citing elder brother privileges.</p><p>Sam lets it go.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The shifter in St. Louis wears Dean’s face and braces himself on Sam’s thighs, familiar eyes inches away lit around the edges with something dangerous. Sam’s face smarts, a bruise rising along the slope of his cheek.</p><p>“He’s sure got issues with you,” The shifter is saying, the curl of Dean’s mouth his but not, unfamiliar mannerisms sliding across familiar features. The heat of his hands seeps through Sam’s jeans as he slides them higher. “But I guess that goes both ways, right?”</p><p>“What,” Sam spits out, jutting his chin to the side as much as the bindings will allow. His skin feels like it’s on fire, like someone put a torch to his feet and stood back to watch the flames climb.</p><p>“See, he knows he’s fucked up,” the shifter says to Sam’s mouth. “Doesn’t know about you though, does he, Sammy?”</p><p>“What the fuck are you talking about,” Sam says, because playing dumb has always been easier. The man wearing Dean’s face pushes closer, nose to nose, and then he uses one hand to hold Sam’s chin level.</p><p>“Doesn’t know what you really ran from,” he breathes.</p><p>When he kisses him Sam bites.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>In Rockford Sam points a shotgun at his brother and pulls the trigger.</p><p>His head's a pressure cooker, blood boiling with rage right down into his fingertips ever since Ellicott reached into his brain and flipped a switch. Dean’s laid out beneath him, face tightened around the pain from the rock salt, and how often has Sam wanted to have him this vulnerable? How often has Sam wanted to stand over him like this, tip the balance?</p><p>“We just gotta burn Ellicott’s bones, Sam, then you’ll be back to normal.”</p><p>“I am normal,” Sam says, even though the throbbing in his temple should indicate that’s not right. “I’m just telling the truth for the first time. I mean, why are we even here? ‘Cause you’re following dad’s orders? You that desperate for his approval?”</p><p>“This ain’t you talking Sam.”</p><p>“Yeah, it is. Got a mind of own, Dean, not like you. It’s fucking pathetic.”</p><p>“So what, you’re gonna <em>kill</em> me?” Dean says it with the same tone he uses when Sam says something dumb or grandiose, like he used to when Sam would challenge him to a fight as kids. <em>So what, you’re gonna </em>beat<em> me, good one Sammy. </em>As if it’s inconsequential, as if Sam doesn’t have a shotgun levelled at his sternum.</p><p>“I’m <em>sick </em>of doing what you tell me,” Sam says, “I’m sick of it. We’re no closer to finding dad than we were six months ago.”</p><p>“Let me make it easier for you.” Dean holds out his gun, eyes dark. “Take it, go on. Real bullets are gonna work a hell of a lot better than rock salt.”</p><p>Sam eyes the gun, and Dean shoves it at him again. He takes it.</p><p>“You’ve ruined my fucking life, you know that? You crashed back in like it was nothing, you treat me like a fucking kid, sometimes you won’t even <em>touch </em>me, like you think I’m gonna explode if you do. God sometimes I look at you and,” he wants to bite down on the words but they keep coming, a dam broken, “you don’t even know, Dean. You don’t even know. I tried so fucking hard and I’m still here, like this, I’m sick of—”</p><p>“You hate me that much? You gonna kill your own brother? Go on.” Dean says, low. His palms are out in supplication, grey from the decades of dust they’ve disturbed. “<em>Do it.</em>”</p><p>Sam pulls the trigger, his hands shaking, because that’s not it. That’s not it at all but it might as well be.</p><p>He pulls the trigger and the chamber clicks. He tries again, and then he’s knocked flat on his back.</p><p>Dean stands over him, something unreadable crossing his face, one hand pressed flat and bloody to his wrecked shirt. Sam’s whole body vibrates with an undiluted rage, simmering over. Dean hits him again.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>“It’s still in there!” Sam coughs out smoke and pushes against his brother’s hands fisted in his jacket, the figure in the window a magnet to something ancient inside him. Dean stands firm, stalwart. Sam hates him for it.</p><p>“It’s fucking suicide, Sam.”</p><p>“I don’t care,” he yells, close enough to see the ash smudged across his brother’s brow. Behind them Sam can hear Monica soothing the kids sobbing against her, and he feels as on fire as the house they’ve just fled. “I don’t care.”</p><p>“I do.” Dean shoves him back, eyes swallowing his face. His voice splinters. His knuckles are strained white in the front of Sam’s shirt, same hands that just cradled another baby out of another fire. Rinse and repeat.</p><p>Later in the motel room Dean watches him like an unexploded mine and Sam lets him. Dad’s not answering his phone and Sam doesn’t care about that either, can’t bring himself to care about anything except how they’ve blown the chance handed to them on a fucking plate.</p><p>“You should’ve let me end this,” he says, picking at a hole in his jeans. He doesn’t look up.</p><p>“The only thing you would’ve ended is you.”</p><p>“You don’t know that,” Sam says. His chest aches.</p><p>“So what, you’re just willing to sacrifice yourself, that it?” Dean is standing over him, a shadow cast across his hands. “You just going to martyr yourself, Sam?”</p><p>“Yeah, I fucking am.”</p><p>“No you’re not.”</p><p>“Why not?” He’s standing now, head buzzing low. “We’ve been searching for this demon our whole lives, it’s the only thing we’ve ever cared about.”</p><p>“Yeah, and I wanna waste it, I do. But it’s not worth fucking dying over.” He scrubs through his hair, jaw taut. There’d been a tremor in his hands on the drive back to the motel that he’d tried to disguise by keeping both hands on the wheel. “I mean it. If hunting it means you getting yourself killed, I hope we never find the damn thing.”</p><p>“It killed Jess. It killed mom.” It can’t have been for nothing, this slide into someone who wants the worst of things. Sam won’t let it be for nothing.</p><p>“Look, you said it yourself once, no matter what we do, they’re gone. And they’re never coming back.” Dean says it softly, the slightest of edges to it, and then Sam has him by the shirt, slamming him flat against the wall of their room.</p><p>“Don’t you fucking,” Sam hisses, knuckles notching on Dean’s collarbone, “Don’t you say that.”</p><p>“Sammy.”</p><p>“You don’t get to fucking say that. Not after all this.” Sam's breath comes hot, ragged in the space between them where they both stink of flames. He counts the beats in his head as Dean’s face cracks at the seams.</p><p>“Sammy, I.” Dean moves his hands from where they’re braced on Sam’s chest, brings them to curl loose across his wrists. “This is all we have. It’s all I have.”</p><p>That’s the problem, Sam wants to scream, that’s the problem you stupid fuck. It’s all either of us have and it’s toxic and profound and it makes me want to unzip my skin. It makes me want to punch you bloody, it makes me want to crawl inside your mouth.</p><p>He whirls away, making sure to push off Dean’s shoulder harder than strictly necessary. He drags a sleeve roughly across his face, smearing together a mess of tears and snot and ash.</p><p>“Dad should’ve called by now. Try him again.”</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The cabin’s in the middle of nowhere. Dean hadn’t even had to jimmy the lock – the door had taken one hard shove and they were in, already marking it theirs with blood and boot prints.</p><p>Sam tries to ignore the bruises blooming darkly along his jaw, the definite crack to his cheekbone where the demon’s ring caught him on a right hook. He’d taken the edge off with something from Dean’s first-aid kit, probably Vicodin but difficult to tell between the dark of the car and the unlabelled pill bottles, the prescriptions made out to names he’d forgotten they’d used. Clarifying hadn’t really been a priority with dad laid out in the backseat.</p><p>And that’s another problem. Sam double checks the salt lines for something to do, listens to Dean moving quietly around the next room. Tries not to think about how dad’s presence upsets the balance.</p><p>When Dean joins him, dark beneath the eyes and his mouth a thin line, Sam puts the salt down. “How is he?”</p><p>“Just needed a bit of rest, that’s all. How are you?” Dean’s eyes cataloguing Sam’s busted lip, the angry split along his cheek, the eye on the way to swelling shut. “You need another Vicodin?”</p><p>“Save ‘em, I’ll survive.” Sam tries to smile and tastes copper. “You think we were followed?”</p><p>“Nah.” Dean crouches to fumble through his duffel, more for something to do with his hands than anything else. “We’re holed up in the middle of buttfuck Missouri. Don’t see ‘em finding us yet.”</p><p>Sam huffs his agreement. Dean’s presence in the room is suffocating, heavy even when he’s not looking at him.</p><p>“You saved my life back there,” he says, as if it’s the first time Dean’s sight has telescoped down to him and him alone. As if Dean could do anything else.</p><p>“Bet you’re glad I brought the gun now, huh?” Dean grins but it’s too quick, too sharp at the corners. Sam could shake him.</p><p>“Yeah, sure.” He checks the salt lines again and tries not to look like that’s what he’s doing. Wonders if they should paint a devil’s trap on the ceiling or if news got round after what happened to Meg and the fuckers are going to start looking up.</p><p>“There was a person in there.” Dean is still down on his haunches, elbows on his knees. “That guy I shot.”</p><p>“Not like you had a choice.”</p><p>“That’s not it.” He’s picking at his nails, methodical. A halfmoon of dried blood at his thumb. “I didn’t hesitate, Sam. Didn’t even flinch. Scares me sometimes, is all. The things I’d do, things I'd kill for you or dad.”</p><p>Sam doesn’t know what to do with this new thing in the room, the shape of Dean’s fear between them. He swallows around the lump in his throat. Part of him feels horribly thrilled at the admission, that Dean contains the same vicious machinery as he does. He’s caught glimpses of it over the years – the middle schooler Dean beat almost unconscious for making Sam’s life hell for a semester, the barfight Dean started with some guy who made a pass at Sam when they were coasting on fake IDs for Sam’s eighteenth birthday – but Dean’s never talked about it as something that scares him. The thought that he isn’t in control of it all the time hooks in Sam’s gut.</p><p>He remembers the hard edge of the desperation that drove him to that faith healer in Nebraska with Dean washed out beside him, the heady thrum in his blood that he knew would carry him through anything if it had to.</p><p>He wants to take Dean’s face in his hands, reverent. He wants to hold him steady and say here, here are the ways we’re the same; do you get it yet?</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p>
  
</p><p>Mid-August in South Dakota pushes ninety, the humidity curling Sam’s hair at his nape as he fidgets in Bobby’s workshop. Dean is out under the car, jeans grimy with oil and sand, belly pale where his shirt rides up. The sun has got him everywhere else, freckles across his nose and shoulders. Tan at the back of his neck beneath the dirt.</p><p>They’ve been bunking at Bobby’s since they were kids, when John used to let them shore up for the summer while he took off to god knows where to do god knows what. When Sam was eight Dean read him <em>The Lord of The Rings</em>, couple chapters each night in bed, spread out on the patchwork quilt in the bigger of Bobby’s spare rooms while the cicadas hummed outside.</p><p>It’s been a week since they stacked dad on a pyre out in the back field, Bobby clinking a beer against Dean’s whiskey – half gone, glowing amber – and leaving them to it in the dark. Sam had dragged his sleeves down over his knuckles, thumbnails already chewed down sore. Dean hadn’t looked at him but Dean had hardly looked at anything except John, unnaturally small amongst the wood.</p><p>Sam’s itching for something to do, which really means he’s itching to get Dean something to do that isn’t sweltering out in the yard or watching <em>Cheers </em>reruns glassy-eyed. He’s spent a couple days going through dad’s truck, dividing the arsenal between their own and Bobby’s, figuring out which files are worth keeping, sifting through the inordinate amount of cell phones in the glovebox. Getting them all charged up had been a day’s job in itself – Sam has worked his way through two already and found nothing, but the third has coughed up a prize.</p><p>“Stop it, Sam,” Dean says, when Sam asks if he wants anything.</p><p>“Stop what?”</p><p>“Stop asking if I need anything, asking if I’m okay. I’m fine. Really.” Always been a shitty liar. “I promise.”</p><p>“We’ve been here a week and you haven’t brought up dad once.” He’s pushing but Dean won’t look at him for too long if he doesn’t.</p><p>“So? You want me to cry about it?” Dean says, jaw strung so tight it may as well be wired shut. He squints across the yard, sweat shining at his temple. “What d’you want me to say?”</p><p>“<em>Anything, </em>Dean! Dad’s dead, Colt’s gone. Aren’t you angry?” Sam chews the inside of his cheek and rolls the phone in his pocket. At this point he’d settle for Dean saying nothing if he’d at least throw a punch, get it out the good old-fashioned way; maybe if Dean had him pressed down in the dirt he’d look him in the eye.</p><p>“Okay.” Dean knots a rag in his fingers, over and over. “You got anything, any leads? Making head or tail of dad’s research? Because I sure ain’t. We’ve got nothing, Sam. So I’m gonna work on the car, ‘cause she’s beat to shit.”</p><p>Sam looks at the ground. He takes the phone out of his pocket, flips it open. “Not nothing.”</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>On an empty stretch of highway two weeks later Dean curves the car to the shoulder and gets out without a word. Sam flexes his fingers in his lap and grimaces, hovers his good hand over the bruises coming up bright. They’re forty minutes out of Greenville and Dean’s hardly spoken.</p><p>Sam waits a minute, two, then follows. Dean’s leaning back against the hood of the car, his shoulders a rugged line.</p><p>“What is it?” Sam says, coming round to stand to the side. Not in front of him, not too close. “Dean?”</p><p>He can count on both hands the amount of times Dean’s said sorry for anything and meant it - the word always grates, catches on his teeth. When he says it now he addresses it to the road, hands deep in his pockets. The sun has backlit his hair golden.</p><p>“It’s my fault,” Dean says, after a while. “Dad.”</p><p>“Dean, c’mon.” Sam’s not stupid, hadn’t been stupid when Dean got himself electrocuted last year either. Things don’t just swing in their favour without something awful being on the other side of the scale. Doesn’t change the fact that he’s finding it hard to care whether dad made a deal or not, which stirs up an interesting mix of distant guilt and disgust at himself that he’s trying to box back up. He sits on the hood, close enough that their elbows knock.</p><p>“I know you’ve been thinking it, don’t play dumb. Full recovery, miraculous. And five minutes later dad’s dead, and the Colt’s gone? Doesn’t take a genius.”</p><p>“You don’t know that.”</p><p>“Come on, Sammy.” Dean’s voice is quiet, cracked down the middle. “Can’t tell me there isn’t a connection there. I don’t know how exactly, but dad’s dead ‘cause of me.”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter,” Sam says. Presses their knees together, the most contact Dean’s allowed for weeks.</p><p>Dean makes an ugly noise at the back of his throat. “I never should’ve come back, Sam. Wasn’t natural.”</p><p>“Dean, it doesn’t <em>matter</em>,” Sam says, and he believes it so fiercely he wants to take Dean by the shoulders and shake him. There’s an undercurrent to this, he knows, something that makes him dangerous. He can tell from the way Dean watches him when he isn’t looking, the way John had looked at him that day in the hospital when Dean flatlined and Sam almost got thrown out for making a scene. The way John had looked at him a decade ago, screaming himself hoarse over Dean in the backseat, covered in his brother’s blood like something out of a shitty B-movie.</p><p>Dean’s mouth twitches at the corner with something like grim acceptance. There’s a fractured look to him, shoulders hunched in like a kicked dog. His eyes are fixed resolutely on the tarmac.</p><p>Sam thinks Dean would probably drive the nails through his own palms if he could.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>It’s raining in Oregon when Sam watches Dean come undone.</p><p>“I’m gonna say this one time – you make a move on him you’ll be dead before you hit the fucking ground, you understand me? Am I clear?” He sounds like dad, knuckles white around the handle of his gun. Shaken loose at the hinges.</p><p>Sam holds his palm flat against the gauze at his chest and watches Dean throw the car keys across the room. He watches him shove everyone else out of the room, face clouded over the way he gets when he’s already made his peace with a situation. Dean tells them to take the car and go and Sam knows it’s bad.</p><p>“Dean, what are you doing.”</p><p>“Wish we had a deck of cards or something,” Dean says, light as anything. He locks the door.</p><p>“Just go, get the fuck out.”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Give me my gun and leave,” Sam says. He sounds punched.</p><p>“I said no, Sammy.” Dean’s using his John voice again, but the edge is gone – it never worked on Sam anyway.</p><p>“This is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”</p><p>“Oh, I don’t know. Remember that waitress in Tampa?”</p><p>“This doesn’t have to be it for both of us,” Sam says. He feels like they keep having this conversation from different sides of the stage, some sort of fucked up self-destruct mechanism ingrained from the start. Part of it feels weirdly calming.</p><p>“No?”</p><p>“You can still go.” Sam swipes his sleeve across his eyes. He doesn’t say there’s a part of him that wants Dean here, that seeing Dean leave this room would kill him quicker than whatever’s in his bloodstream.</p><p>“Yeah, well.” Dean sits on the cabinet across from him, gun in his hands. “Who says I want to?”</p><p>“What.”</p><p>“I’m tired, Sam,” he says, and here it is. Dean finally showing his hand. “I’m tired of the job, this fucking weight on my shoulders, man. I’m tired of it.”</p><p>“So what, you’re just gonna lay down and die?”</p><p>“Not quite Butch and Sundance<em>, </em>but hey.” Dean tries for a half smile. “You don’t get to be mad at me for this, Sammy.”</p><p>“Is this about what happened with dad? Listen, I know—”</p><p>“It’s not about dad. I mean, part of it maybe,” Dean trails off, eyes soft. He’s disappeared somewhere, Sam can tell – he wants to cross the room and get his hands on him, shake him back down and force him to look.</p><p>He wants to cross the room and get his hands on him.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The first time he kisses Dean – real Dean, not something wearing his face – they’re at a rambling Victorian hotel in Connecticut and he’s drunker than he’s been since Jess died and he blacked out in a motel bathroom. He thinks he’s earned it, seeing as how everyone he meets lately thinks he needs putting down.</p><p>It figures that he never found a good enough answer in the psychology books he stole from the library as a kid when none of them included a chapter on what to expect when a demon opened a vein and ruined you. It makes sense, that he’s been impure from the start. It makes sense.</p><p>“Alright man, time for bed. C’mon.” Dean pulls the empty bottle from his hand and then he’s hauling him up from the chair, Sam gripping the front of his shirt like it's the only thing keeping him standing.</p><p>“I need you to watch out for me,” Sam says, his voice far away.</p><p>“Always do.”</p><p>“No, you don’t get it.” Sam lets his head loll back, steadies himself on Dean’s shoulders. “You have to watch <em>out </em>for me. In case—”</p><p>“In case what, Sam.” Dean’s face fuzzes in and out of focus. Sam touches his good hand to his cheek, the side of his throat where his pulse jumps.</p><p>“In case you have to kill me. In case I turn into something wrong and you, and you have to kill me.”</p><p>“Sammy, c’mon,” Dean says, a warning in there somewhere.</p><p>Sam shoves him by the shoulder to shake them apart, anger seeping warm through his chest. “You told dad you would, you have to.”</p><p>“Dad shouldn’t have asked me to do that. You don’t,” Dean swallows, eyes closed. “You don’t put that on your kids.”</p><p>“He was right, Dean. There’s something wrong with me, in here,” Sam thumps his palm against his heart, where it hurts. It hurts and he thinks he might be crying, ugly and red-eyed, Dean blurring in front of him. Tastes salt. “There’s something wrong and everyone around me fucking dies.”</p><p>“Yeah, well. I’m not dying, and neither are you.” Dean pushes him and Sam lets himself fall against the bed. He doesn’t let go of Dean’s jacket.</p><p>“You’re the only one who can do it,” he says, and Dean’s looking at him like he’s broken his heart.</p><p>“Don’t ask that of me.”</p><p>“I want it to be you, it has to be, you have to promise.” Sam brings his left hand up to Dean’s face, thumb dragging clumsily along his cheek. He leaves the other curled in his lapel. It’s precarious, whatever this is, limbs arranged like a Caravaggio in the dark. “<em>Dean</em>.”</p><p>“I promise.” Always been a shitty liar. "Okay, Sam? I promise." Dean’s hand slides up to cup his pulse so briefly Sam hardly notices, and then it’s heavy on his shoulder again.</p><p>“Thanks, Dean, thanks,” Sam mumbles. His hand fits perfectly at the hinge of Dean’s jaw. So what if Dean has to kill him.</p><p>“Alright, Sam,” Dean starts, but Sam’s surging up from the bed, nose smudging against Dean’s chin before he finds his mouth. He pushes against Dean’s bottom lip with his tongue, licking him open, greedy and desperate because even drunk he knows he’s taking too much. Sam scratches his nails up into his brother’s hair, feels viciously pleased when the grip at his shoulder tightens: here’s another reason, Dean, here’s another strike against my name.</p><p>They don’t talk about it in the morning, in a careful sort of way. Sam throws up tequila and Dean cracks jokes from the doorway, as if that makes up for how he hasn’t looked Sam in the eye once.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Riding shotgun in his own body Sam digs his thumb into the bullet wound he put in Dean’s shoulder and can’t do anything but watch.</p><p>Meg only lets him wake up for the worst parts, keeps him sunk down in the dark for the rest of it – he’s watched himself sweet-talk his way into slitting Steve Wandell’s throat, heard Meg whisper disgusting things just for him while he held a knife on Jo. And now he’s hooking his thumb into Dean’s shoulder, the blood welling up beneath the gauze. He wonders if Dean pulled the bullet out by himself.</p><p><em>Not the first time you’ve thought about being inside your brother, huh Sammy </em>says Meg, twisting deeper. <em>Take what you can get, am I right?</em></p><p>“You’re worthless, Dean. You couldn’t save your dad, and you know you can’t save your brother.” Sam would scream if his voice was his own – Dean had promised to kill him and he’s had so many chances and Sam’s still here, holding Dean down against Bobby’s floor, and even now he’s not putting up a fight. “I mean, do I have to kill someone in front of you to make you do it, Dean? Almost bled the Harvelle girl like a stuck pig, and you didn’t do shit. What do I have to do with Sam’s body before you take a shot at it, huh?”</p><p>Meg makes his gaze drop to Dean’s open mouth, lingers at the column of his throat too long. <em>What if I tore his jugular out with your teeth Sam, would you like that? </em></p><p>Sam feels his arm rear back for a right hook and then his wrist is caught tight by Bobby, a hot poker pressed into the raised scar locking Meg inside. His vision whites out for a second and then the demon vacates the premises. A headache starts up behind his eyes like a jackhammer.</p><p>“Sammy?” Dean says, and then clocks him one, which is the least he fucking deserves all things considered. The burst of pain in his jaw brings him back to himself and he cradles his blistering forearm close to his chest. His mouth tastes like copper.</p><p>Bobby looks at him different. Later Sam nods his thanks when he hands him an icepack in the kitchen and tries to shrink himself down in his chair. Dean looks at him sidelong when he thinks he isn’t paying attention, dark beneath the eyes like dad used to get when he was running on fumes. He offers Sam something from a pill bottle he pulls out of his inside pocket but Sam shakes his head.</p><p>“Suit yourself.” Dean lowers the bag of ice from his face, wincing. “Got ‘em from Jo to take the edge off after you put a fuckin’ hole in me.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Sam says to the tabletop.</p><p>“She’s a goddamn menace with a med kit, man. You were better at it as a kid.” Dean rolls the pill bottle in his hand, disappearing somewhere in his head. Sam wonders if the handful of things that are fucked up about that sentence even register.</p><p>Then Bobby comes in and asks if they know Steve Wandell, eyeing them both but lingering on Sam a beat too long, and Dean says <em>no sir </em>and doesn’t so much as blink. From the look Bobby gives him that’s just something they’re all about to bury, the less they confirm the better. Sam keeps his head down.</p><p>On the drive out of Sioux Falls he chews his thumbnail and says, “You promised.”</p><p>“What?” Dean asks, and then, “It wasn’t you Sam, I wasn’t gonna <em>shoot </em>you.”</p><p>And therein lies the problem, Sam thinks. He knows Dean wasn’t even confident it was a possession until after the holy water trick at Jo’s bar. If he dwells too long on the mental gymnastics Dean’s been doing for the last couple of days to excuse anything, to craft a narrative in which he isn’t guilty, Sam wants to run and not stop. Briefly Meg had let him surface when Dean had first arrived at the motel, hands all over him to find the source of the bleeding; Sam had seen him change, shift so easily into someone ready to bleach the room down and hit the road. <em>You’re okay, that’s all that matters, anything else we can deal with. </em>Even faced with insurmountable evidence that Sam had sliced and diced a hunter Dean had stalled.</p><p>Sam leans his temple against the window, lets the outside blur. Flexes his fingers just to prove that they’re his. He wonders which of them is going to survive this.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>“You shoulda seen it, Sam. Mom was alive, and Jess. You were gonna marry her.” Dean is hunched over on the edge of the motel bed, staring at his hands. He huffs a laugh but his heart’s not in it. “You were such a pussy.”</p><p>“Yeah, sure.”</p><p>“I’m telling you man, dream-you would’ve straight up died if you saw half the shit we see.” Dean’s absent-mindedly rubbing at his wrists, bruised dark.  </p><p>“We didn’t get along?” Sam says.</p><p>“Nah.”</p><p>“Thought it was supposed to be like, a perfect fantasy life.” Sam sits on the twin bed opposite, their knees touching. He’s been hovering like an anxious mother ever since they got back and he’s trying to reign it in.</p><p>Dean shakes his head. “Just a wish. I wished mom had never died, that we never went hunting. You and me never,” He gestures vaguely, gaze flicking up to Sam once. “Y’know.”</p><p>No, Sam wants to say. I <em>don’t </em>know, I want you to say it. Try and put it into words, whatever this is. Pick it apart and try and make it normal. Instead he says, “I’m glad we do. I’m glad you got yourself out.”</p><p>“Yeah, lucky me,” Dean says, gone in his own head again. He’s been doing that a lot since dad died, disappearing; if Sam could anchor himself to his brother’s body he would. “I wanted to stay, Sammy. Wanted to stay so fucking bad.”</p><p>Sam feels himself tense at that, even though it’s the most obvious thing that Dean would rather live in a world where mom was alive, where neither of them knew how to dismantle and reassemble a handgun blind. It’s just that Dean was gone and Sam had hardly been able to breathe. He’d found him strung up in a shitty warehouse halfway to dead and something inside him had felt ready to burn the whole place to the ground until he’d found a pulse.</p><p>“Woulda killed you myself if you had,” he says, and Dean hides a smile.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>In a cemetery in southern Wyoming Sam looks his brother in the eye and asks him if he sold his soul.</p><p>Dean scoffs, looks at the car and the sky and the mud on his cuffs, scrubs his hand through his hair like he does when he’s stalling. “C’mon, no,” he says, “No.”</p><p>"Dean." Sam’s blood runs cold. “Tell me the truth.”</p><p>“Sammy, c’mon.” Dean meets his gaze then and Sam almost wishes he hadn’t, because the answer’s there without Dean even having to open his mouth. Always been a shitty liar. He’s trying for a smile, some sort of fucked up laugh dying in his throat.</p><p>“How long did you get.” Sam hears himself falter. Dean glances skywards as if that’s going to help any, and Sam could punch him.</p><p>“One year,” Dean says. He looks frighteningly young, eyes blown wide and shining. “I got one year.”</p><p>“You shouldn’t’ve done that.” Sam swallows the panic like bile. “How could you fucking do that.”</p><p>Dean’s face falls. There’s blood tracking down his brow and into his eyes, dirt across his nose. He looks wrecked. When he swipes at his cheek with his cuff Sam catches sight of the barely grown kid who used to rock him to sleep, humming Zeppelin’s greatest hits into his hair.</p><p>“Don’t get mad at me,” Dean says, and the desperation cracks his voice. “Don’t you do that. I had to, Sammy. I had to look out for you. That’s my fucking job.”</p><p>And whose job is it going to be when you’re not here, Sam wants to say, whose job is it to clean up the mess you’re going to leave behind when you check out in twelve months. The crooked thing inside him thrashes against his ribs. He could shove Dean against the side of the car right now and break his nose and he thinks Dean would let him and he hates that, all of it.</p><p>“I don’t care what it takes,” he says. If he’s crying Dean doesn’t mention it. “I’m gonna get you out of it.”</p><p>And then Dean smiles at him, easy as anything. It breaks his heart.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The drive from Fossil Butte is thirteen hours, give or take. Dean drives even though Sam isn’t sure when he last slept – they stop for coffee two hours in and Dean drinks it leaning against the trunk at the side of the road, bitching while Sam cleans up his head wound. There are purpling thumbprints pressed beneath his eyes.</p><p>“I’m taking the next shift,” Sam says, applying butterfly stitches with careful fingers. “Shouldn’t’ve let you drive first.”</p><p>“What, like I’m gonna die?”</p><p>“That’s not funny,” Sam says. “You might be concussed.”</p><p>“I’m not <em>concussed, </em>dude.” Dean scowls at him. The sun is creeping up pink behind them.</p><p>“Just slow then,” Sam says. He spins the keys he’s just pickpocketed around his finger and laughs when Dean cusses him out.</p><p>When they get back to Bobby's there’s the issue of rooms, a conversation Dean mostly avoids by taking his time dragging their duffels out of the car. Ellen looks like she could sleep at the kitchen table, whiskey at her elbow as Jo’s phone goes to voicemail three times in a row, but Sam wants to at least leave her the option. Bobby offers him the couch but the thought of letting Dean out of his sight shoots Sam’s heart straight into his throat, so he says they’ll bunk in together; Bobby refers to the room as theirs anyway, they’ll no doubt be out cold so quick they won’t even have time to fight over the comforter. Bobby studies him, one hand on his shoulder. Tells him not to get grave dirt on the sheets.</p><p>Dean doesn’t fight him on the bed sharing, either. Sam had expected him to, but he just shrugs and kicks his boots off in the hall.</p><p>The sun slips into the room through the curtains to cut a line across the quilt and Dean’s chest where he’s laid out flat on his back. Sam wants to trace the path with his fingertips.</p><p>“You falling asleep standing up now?” Dean says, squinting at him with one eye open.</p><p>“You falling asleep in your jeans now?” Sam throws back, and Dean smiles lopsidedly. “You want a shower?”</p><p>“Why, I stink?”</p><p>“No worse than usual.”</p><p>“Fuck you,” Dean says. He sits up enough to shrug his overshirt off and throw it off the side of the bed, then he flops back down. Hands at his belt, sleep slow.  </p><p>Sam kicks his jeans off, drops his jacket down on top of them. “I’m gonna use up the hot water if you’re not.”</p><p>“Whatever.” Dean has his arm flung across his eyes. Sam watches his chest rise and fall and then feels so much like there’s a vise around his ribs he has to leave the room.</p><p>The shower scalds the back of his neck and he lets it. Offers a prayer up to something he has to hope is listening; please keep him safe, please keep him with me, please cut us some fucking slack. They’re both too stubborn, too selfish for this. Dean had been so angry with dad, burning with it all year because of the deal he made. On the drive to Wyoming Dean had kept looking at him as if he could hardly believe he was there and Sam wants to scream his throat raw. </p><p>In his t-shirt and shorts he pads back across the hall and finds Dean under the quilt, face pressed into the pillow, jeans finally discarded. Sam can tell from his breathing he’s not asleep. He wonders how much time they could steal if he just locked the door behind him right now.</p><p>“Scoot over, asshole,” he says, even though Dean has already taken the left side, closest to the door, like he used to when they were kids and Bobby let him keep a shotgun against the nightstand.</p><p>“Not my fault you’re too fuckin' giant,” Dean mumbles.</p><p>“Yeah, whatever.” Sam rolls his eyes and gets into bed, shifts onto his side to stare at the jut of Dean’s shoulder blades. Counts his breaths and tries not to think about how he’s going to run out one day.</p><p>He reaches across and touches his hand to the curve of Dean’s bicep. Knots his fingers in his shirt. He expects Dean to flinch, shrug him off. They haven’t spoken about Connecticut and it seems stupid to dig it up now – so what if Sam had kissed him, what’s Dean going to do about it? He can’t cry codependency after managing just two days without Sam before selling his soul.</p><p>But Dean doesn’t flinch.</p><p>Sam shuffles closer, anchor on Dean’s sleeve and then his chest, until he’s flush against the whole of him, knees slotting against knees. Dean tries to twist over but Sam tightens his grip around his ribs, crushes his nose to Dean’s shirt where he smells like sweat and sulphur and shitty detergent. He holds his brother against him like staunching a wound and with his face pressed to Dean’s back Sam lets himself cry.</p><p>Dean slides his hand over Sam’s, gently loosens the grip enough to pull their hands higher. Whispers “Hey Sammy, hey, hey,” against his palm like a litany, like penitence. He used to do this when they were squatting in places with no heat as kids – curled up under heaped blankets, Sam’s small hands caught in his own and breathed on until the feeling came back.</p><p>“This is your fault,” Sam says, smudging damp patches across Dean’s shoulder. There’s a laundry list of things that applies to and he doesn’t elaborate, because if Dean doesn’t get it by now he never will. It’s Dean’s fault that there’s something gone wrong inside him, Dean’s fault that it’s about to become even more fucking unbearable. Dean’s fault that when he turned up in Cold Oak Sam was so relieved, body suddenly slack with it, that he let his guard down long enough for Jake to sever his spinal cord.</p><p>Dean doesn’t say anything. He curls Sam’s fingers down into a fist inside his own and holds his knuckles against his mouth, warm and familiar. Sam feels like his chest is collapsing.</p><p>He pushes up until his nose brushes the back of Dean’s neck, skin sun-dark, and presses his lips to the notch of his spine. He detangles their hands to run his palm down to where Dean’s t-shirt is loose at his hip and slide it underneath, settling across Dean’s stomach. There are scars there he can read like braille – here’s the jagged line Sam first felt when it was fresh and bleeding, the rock salt pockmarks Sam put there himself. He could drop his mouth to them if he wanted. Dean owes him that much.</p><p>“Sam,” Dean murmurs. Might be a warning but he doesn’t stop him. He ghosts his hand over Sam’s through cotton, thumb catching on his wrist.</p><p>“You don’t get to leave,” Sam says, open-mouthed against the curve where shoulder becomes throat. Hint of teeth and Dean’s hand on his tightens. “You can’t.”</p><p>With his grip almost bruising on Dean’s hip Sam shifts them until he’s got Dean on his back, legs tangled. He settles his full weight against him as if pulling away for even a second will shatter everything. His hands up under Dean’s shirt, his tongue hot at Dean’s pulse. Something behind his ribs cracking down the centre.</p><p>“Sammy baby, c’mon,” Dean says, hands coming up cup his face, and he hasn’t called him that since they were kids. He smudges his thumb across Sam’s cheekbone. “Don’t.”</p><p>Sam pulls back only far enough to look at him, his hair brushing Dean’s chin. “You can’t.”</p><p>“You died.” Dean’s voice is barely there, his eyes shining. Puts it plainly, stricken with the quiet truth of the matter: Sam was dead and Dean had wanted to be, so he’d found a crossroads and knelt in the dirt until Sam wasn’t anymore, and now look at them. Sam’s so tired of being heavy to carry.</p><p>He tips forward and kisses him hard, sucks Dean’s bottom lip between his teeth until he opens up beneath him like Sam knew he would. It figures that Dean would give him this now when he won’t be here long enough to have to face the consequences. Sam would think he was doing this to placate him, letting him get his hands and his mouth on him as if this is all part of the premature grieving process he’s sliding towards, but Dean’s not exactly unwilling.</p><p>“I’m not gonna let you die,” Sam says against Dean’s jaw, eyes shut tight. Dean cups the back of his head with one hand, fingers in his hair, holding him in.</p><p>“I know,” he says, and Sam almost believes him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>standard disclaimer that real-world incest is deplorable, but eric kripke had john winchester pull a flowers-in-the-attic on his kids from the start and now look at 'em. </p><p>title taken from 'the ghost of marvin gaye sits inside the shell of nikola tesla's machines and builds himself a proper coffin' by hanif abdurraqib. a lot of the episode-specific dialogue is lifted from transcripts in all its weird glory, though artistic liberty has been taken with some of it. thanks for readin!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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